The Nations

In 2005, two of life's great survivors were the mid-week guests of British television chat show host Michael Parkinson. To the fierce joy of the televison audience, Irish singer, instrumentalist and songwriter Phil Lynott played an ad-hoc riff from Whiskey in the Jar. Lynott then spoke of the "lost years" when he was dogged by drug and alcohol dependency. Lynott said that he not touched any of the hard stuff since the night of December 25, 1985, when he was rushed to hospital suffering from a heroin overdose. He suffered medical death through heart failure on January 4, 1986 at the age of 36. Exactly fifteen years before, he had recorded Thin Lizzy's debut album began on January 4, 1971. Yul Brynner congratulated Lynott on a beautiful move, a pun on both the riff, and also his recovery from death. Brynner had given up the hard stuff too, "Now that I'm here, I tell you, don't smoke." was his pearl of wisdom for the evening.

In 2014, white supremacist South African time-travellers set a course for New York City 1980. Led by Andries Rhoodie, the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (Afrikaner Resistance Movement) are executing Plan B of "America Will Break", following their failure to alter the course of the Civil War by supplying the Guns of the South. This time, their objectives are more limited - to “preserve” the Republic of South Africa by extending the lifespan of Apartheid indefinately. The supremacists figure that by accentuating John Belushi's near-death experience on the set of the Blues Brothers, filming will be cancelled thus destroying a vital symbol of inter-racial redemption that unmistakeably changed the world forever. Trouble is the AWB's time machine is simply unable to penetrate a shadowy sphere around the filming of the movie. The power of R&B just will not be denied.

In 1955, Nikita Khruschev prepared the Secret Speech or Khruschev Report which he intended to deliver "On the Personality Cult and its Consequences" at the 20th Party Congress. Needing to emphasise the insanity of the final years of Joseph Stalin's monstrous rule in the USSR, Khruschev described the grotesque scenes from the Premier's dacha. Late at night members of the Politburo were compelled to dance to long playing records of barking dogs. He described the sick enjoyment of the bullies Stalin and Lavrenty Beria watching in a room full of mirrors to intensify the scene. Twisted images reflected back to the Politburo members, save Stalin and Beria's. Being nosferatu, they caste no reflection.

Omoro Kinte	In 1976/1750, in a dream Omoro Kinte sees a great river running into a bay. By the sea, he enters a strange town, to find a child of the village held in chains. When he awakes, he hurries to the village elder and recounts the tale. “You must send me there with your rituals”, says Omoro in the Mandinka tongue.

In 1940, on this day Winston Churchill delivered a famous calls to arms. The address was made to the remnants of the British Royal Navy in Port Stanley, Falklands Islands. “The Battle for Britain” was over”, said Churchill “ but the Battle of the Atlantic was just beginning”.	Winston Churchi..

Norman Conquest	In 1066, the Norman Conquest began as William the Conqueror invaded England across the Calais-Dover land bridge. Political union followed territorial integrity. The French Province Bretagne also known as Brittany joined with the land referred to by Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae as Britannia major or "Greater Britain". The term “greater” referred simply to the larger lass made west of the land bridge, for Monmouth to distinguish it from Britannia minor, "Lesser Britain" or Brittany on the continent; regrettably, it has been misinterpreted ever since as a statement of grandeur.

In 1867, the Prussian Government took control of Pihemanu one hundred and forty nautical miles east of the International Date Line. Known to America as Midway, as its name suggests, the Island lies nearly halfway between North America and Asia. It also lies almost halfway around the earth from Greenwich, England. In September 1940, Hitler loaned the base to Fleet Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto at the signature of the Tripartite Pact by the Axis powers of Japan, Germany and Italy. This move had been widely anticipated, and indeed had prevented President Roosevelt from ordering the Pacific Fleet to sail from San Francisco to Pearl Harbour where it would of course be too vulnerable to stealth attacks.	Midway